


Problem child

by so_shhy



Series: ADHD Vitya [4]
Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Everything is Complicated, Future Fic, Gen, Snippet, families are complicated, people are complicated
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-09
Updated: 2019-01-09
Packaged: 2019-10-07 11:40:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,522
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17365268
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/so_shhy/pseuds/so_shhy
Summary: A glimpse into the future of Victor’s half-siblings, through their father’s eyes.





	Problem child

**Author's Note:**

> You don’t need to read the whole series for this story to make sense, but you definitely do need to read Victor Alexandrovich.
> 
> EDIT: oops, totally forgot to thank Tawabids, who is the best beta ever and encouraged me to put some effort into Sasha's backstory. I learned stuff about Russian history!

It’s the end of a long day of meetings when Sasha Nikiforov lets himself back into his hotel suite. He shrugs out of his suit jacket and drapes it over a chair. He loosens his tie. He breathes. Then he goes into the bedroom and finds the TV remote, set on a table beside the coffee machine. In a couple of hours he’ll be out at dinner, plying his clients with food and wine on his company credit card. But for now there’s a gap in his schedule, and while he ought to spend it preparing for tomorrow he won’t break a promise to his wife.

The television stretches across half the bedroom wall. He surfs through a dozen channels before he finds what he’s looking for – a sports channel with a skater twirling across the screen, sequins flashing as her skirt flares out.

He used to do this when Vitya was a boy. He would switch on the figure skating and pay attention to the routines so that afterwards, when Vitya asked, he could say that he had watched. There’s no need to do the same for Max and his violin – Max turned twenty this year and doesn’t care about anyone’s approval. Still, he promised Lana.

Over the music, the commentators are discussing the girl’s performance in yesterday’s competition. She took the bronze, skating to Mozart. This isn’t Mozart. It’s – well, not rap, but something like it. Music from America.

He sits on the edge of the bed and gets his phone out of his pocket, scrolling through his emails. He reads a message or two and flags up some things to reply to. The girl finishes her routine and is replaced by a pair of skaters from China, accompanied by the strains of a song he remembers from his schooldays. The Beatles, one of the songs that wormed their way into Leningrad-as-was. People used to press the black market records onto x-ray plates, setting ribs and skulls spinning on the turntable. Bone music, they called it.

The music changes twice more. The commentators spout irrelevancies.

When he next looks up from his phone the girl bending to collect a bouquet of roses is a child, years younger than his Katya. Her skin is the colour of the ice.

They introduce Yuri Plisetsky. As the crowd roars, the camera cuts to the skater at the rinkside, then to a handful of men rushing onto the ice hefting boxes and cables. Within moments the men have erected a stage the size of a dining table at the end of the rink. The instant they’re done, the camera zooms in on Max as he steps through the gate and mounts the two steps to the stage.

He’s Victor Nikiforov’s brother, the commentators announce. His name is an afterthought.

Sasha rolls his eyes, resettling himself onto the bed. No musician’s tuxedo for his son. Leather jacket. Rips in his jeans. Hair falling forward into his eyes. He looks like he should be playing in someone’s garage, or in an underground club in the 70s with a man at the door keeping watch for the police.

With a laugh and some banter, the commentators promise not to talk during this performance. They want the music to be heard.

The arena lights dim. Max bends to plug in his electric violin, comes back to his feet and raises his bow to hover over the strings. A spotlight falls on Yuri Plisetsky. There are cheers and whistles from the crowd before silence settles around the arena.

Sasha can’t tell which of them gives the signal. In one instant, Plisetsky jerks into motion and Max’s bow plummets down onto the strings.

There’s no accompaniment. It’s a violin solo, if you can count it as music. The violin wails, hums and crashes into sounds that no instrument should be able to make, while Yuri Plisetsky’s movements wail and hum and crash in turn, a duplication of incoherence.

 Vitya used to dance on his skates. Plisetsky battles with the air and the ice. With gravity.

As the figure whirls faster the music builds to a screech that makes Sasha’s eardrums thrum. He wishes he could let himself turn off the television. Instead he reaches for the remote and hits the volume button until, if he closed his eyes, he could imagine that it was playing in the next room. Now the violin whines and buzzes like an insect. The rebellion in the skater’s movement diminishes in the quiet until what was a battle cry has become an exhibition of the human body’s capabilities.

Sasha bends forward to unlace his shoes. He eases them off and draws his legs up onto the bed, shifting back and plumping up a pillow to lean against. Without the noise he can appreciate Plisetsky’s artistry and ability the same way he used to appreciate Vitya’s. When Vitya skated, a twist of his hand and a tilt of his head could steal the audience’s breath.

The camera cuts to another shot of Max, bow flying and fingers flexing against the strings. Sasha sighs. Like all parents, he has hopes and dreams for his children. With Vitya, he managed to accept that the future was athletics. There was no other choice. Vitya couldn’t build a career, but he could win medals. It turned out the Russian Federation cared about that just as much as the USSR had.

Max, though, has the potential for something of substance. Both his music teachers said he should have applied to the Moscow Conservatory. He refused. Now he’s off at business school, where, with his intellect, he could excel. But no. He’s doing the minimum he can get away with and still pass his exams. Playing rock, or pop, or whatever it is. There seems no reason for it anymore. No rebellion in it. No police at the door. So why not play music with value?

Sasha can’t ask. Once, he could talk to Max about anything – literature, science, politics. Now it’s like talking to a caricature of a teenager. Scowls and silence.

On the screen, Plisetsky shudders into stillness. The violin whines on until the sound melds with the patter of applause. Sasha turns up the volume again in time to hear the commentators rhapsodising about the interaction between the two performers, the magic of having musician and skater present together. The camera lingers on Plisetsky as he sweeps to a halt by the stage and reaches up to shake Max’s hand. Then he turns back to the audience and they both bow, wave and smile.

By the barrier behind them, a figure steps forward. Sasha only catches a glimpse, before the screen returns to a shot of the three commentators. He doesn’t see her face, but he can recognise his daughter from her silhouette and the way she moves.

The tension in his shoulders gives a twinge. Katya in Moscow. He knows he indulges her – spoils her, he sometimes worries – but this time he hadn’t wanted to give in. He would trust Pasha with her. Max, he imagines, will take her to some club and let her drink and dance and be pawed at by boys. Vitya, there with Plisetsky, is no reassurance. He’d walk them in past the waiting club-goers and the bouncer with a smile and a nod.

But Pasha had argued for Katya’s trip, and Pasha can always get his mother on his side. Sasha has one son who used to pay no attention to anything that went on around him, and another who sticks his nose into everything. Pasha has always been a meddler. Sasha doesn’t lose his temper as a rule, but if Pasha tries to pester him into letting Katya go to the US for college...

His shoulders tighten one more notch. He rolls them in an attempt to stretch out the kinks, and flicks off the TV as he does so, cutting off an interview mid-sentence. In the moment the screen darkens he realises that the person talking, dressed in a suit and tie that must have cost as much as Sasha’s own, was Vitya.

Looking away from the TV, Sasha’s eyes catch on the coffee machine and the glint of light on the foil coffee capsules. For a moment he is thirty years in the past, when coffee or milk or meat meant huddling with a crowd of others in the cold outside the store, a number scrawled on his hand to mark his place in the line. Now there is coffee set out for him, and fresh milk in the fridge. He can make a cup whenever he wants it.

He hopes Vitya has forgotten hunger. The younger three never lived through it.

With a shake of his head, he lets the past dissolve. A glance at his watch shows him that there’s time to finish some work before he calls Lana. He gets out his laptop and props it on his knees, letting out a sigh as his brain refocuses on the client’s business challenges.

He loves his children, god knows, but it’s a relief to stop thinking about them.

**Author's Note:**

> Every comment on this series is like gold dust to me and some of them have KILLED ME WITH JOY. I’m terrible at replying (I agonise over it every time and then give up due to lack of confidence) but because this is basically a snippet of my future headcanon I will totally get over myself and answer any questions about what happens to the characters.
> 
> Please feel free to comment in your own language if you'd prefer, I'll figure it out.


End file.
